Analysis of the 8x10 / IQ180 comparison

**timparkin** · 5-Oct-2011, 15:27

Hi,

I've posted an article about this on the landscape photography website I run. I've made the article freely accessible so hopefully it won't cause any issues with me linking to it here.

http://www.landscapegb.com/2011/10/t...ls-of-testing/

Regards

Tim Parkin

**jb7** · 5-Oct-2011, 16:05

It reads like an episode of CSI, the part where they explain the evidence, before making an arrest-

Thanks for corroborating my hunch about the shortcomings of the original test (smiley)-
I'm glad Marcus is still involved, and if the next test is as thorough as your forensic dissection of the first one, then we have something to look forward to.

Thanks also for maintaining a balanced view, throughout the whole episode-

j

**EOTS** · 6-Oct-2011, 01:13

Well done, Tim!
Looking forward to the retesting!

**Tobias Key** · 6-Oct-2011, 04:52

Tim

That's really interesting. I was wondering after the test is done would it be possible to show a breakdown of costs for 5x4 and 10x8 vs. MFDB. I think that's one of the areas that's studiously avoided by Lula and the like but I think it would be very useful to know at what volume of shots an IQ180 becomes cheaper than shooting LF. I think one of real advantages of LF film is in its price/performance ratio at low shooting volumes. Of course Kodak would be doing this if they had any brains...

**polyglot** · 6-Oct-2011, 06:39

I remember the huge thread we already had on this and I think this newly published analysis confirms my earlier suspicion that it doesn't matter which medium you choose, because both of them will be limited by either DOF or diffraction depending on the aperture you choose. For a given perspective and with practical DOF, there can be no benefit to either in terms of resolution because both systems extract all of the possible information available in the light coming through that hole in front.

So, you can lug around a massive 8x10 (and get movements), or you can pay out the nose for the MFDB (and get a nice workflow) - choose your poison. Just to confound the issue**, my conjecture is that with modern optics and high resolution films, I suspect that you should be able to get the same results from a MF (view) camera. In other words, you can use a much cheaper/smaller system than either of the presented options and STILL be limited by DOF and/or diffraction for practical purposes - the IQ180 results show that 645 optics are good enough and we know that good films support at least 5um resolution, which is about all you need.

Therefore the only resolution advantage I see in going to huge formats is photographing very flat things, which IMHO is a very niche or uninteresting pursuit.

** no, I'm not just saying that to bait the LF forum